


Not On My Watch

by frankie_mcstein



Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: Five Times, Gen, i really can't tag, patterson in danger, patterson is adorable, patterson saves the day, whole team is kick arse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 12:30:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12681930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankie_mcstein/pseuds/frankie_mcstein
Summary: Five times someone (stupidly) threatened Patterson and various members of the team saved her backside. (And one bonus time when she was a computer using BAMF and saved the team's backsides)





	Not On My Watch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [truthtakestime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/truthtakestime/gifts).



> truthtakestime enjoys Blindspot and adores Patterson. I enjoy Blindspot and adore truthtakestime. So I did a thing.
> 
> DinerGuy did her beta magic on this so they own any remaining issues.

Not On My Watch

(There’s no rhyme or reason to the setting of these scenes, some could be before Jane joins the team, others will, out of necessity, be after. The focus is on whichever character is kicking butt so the timeline isn’t important.)

 

One: Mayfair

It wasn’t every day that Mayfair pulled her sidearm. Heck, it wasn’t every day she even carried her sidearm. The universe had apparently decided today was a good day to mess with her. Weller and his team had come in after spending far too many hours running around in the woods trying to stop a drug smuggling ring, brought to their attention by a square-shaped tattoo with Liberty’s scales, unbalanced, above it. 

Everything had seemed to be going according to procedure; the two men who’d been apprehended had been taken to separate interrogation rooms where Weller and Zapata were questioning one and Reade and Jane were working on the other. Mayfair was looking forward to closing the file on this case and was filling in paperwork in anticipation of just that when there was a brief flurry of activity and surge of voices.

She looked up at the noise to see a relatively new agent standing with his back to the wall, Patterson in front of him. His arm was around her throat, and his gun was against her head. In a matter of seconds, Mayfair had pulled her own gun, left her office, and was standing in the bullpen.

“Everyone, clear the area.” She made sure her voice was firm, made sure her agents would realise who was speaking. Patterson was a favourite amongst her people, and the last thing Mayfair wanted was someone doing something stupid to try to help their friend.

“Take it easy, Bradford.” She kept her gun pointed at him, trying to ignore the frozen sort of look on Patterson’s face. The younger woman was scared and fighting hard to hide her fear, but her wide eyes and rapid breathing betrayed her.

“You don’t want to do th…” Patterson trailed off into a squeak as the arm around her neck tightened viciously, and Mayfair’s finger twitched on the trigger guard.

“I don’t wanna do this? Is that what you were gonna say?” Bradford pressed the gun harder against Patterson’s temple, and the tiny gasp made Mayfair’s teeth clench. “I have to do this!”

“Why?” Mayfair seized the opportunity to get the man talking. “What happened, Bradford? Why is this necessary?” Mayfair frowned as the man in front of her snorted.

“Because of this! Because of her!” And here he shook Patterson, nearly pulling her off her feet.

“Why? What did I do to you?” Patterson’s voice was higher than normal, thick with fear, and Mayfair felt a surge of pride that even her non-combative agents were tough enough to take a situation like this and try to run with it.

“You keep poking into things that don’t concern you!” Bradford started moving, keeping his back pressed against the wall to make sure no one could get behind him, dragging Patterson along with him.

Mayfair turned on the spot to follow him, tracking him with her gun. She knew the rest of the agents present would be lining the halls that exited from the bullpen, and that any one of them would be only to happy to put a bullet in Bradford. The trouble was that his proximity to Patterson put the lab tech at risk. “You can’t get out of here, Bradford,” she stated, calmly, firmly. “Why not tell me what this is all about?”

“This is about a nosy little fool who can’t leave things alone and gets my family arrested by the FBI!” His finger tightened on the trigger, and Patterson whimpered as the pressure on her throat began to affect her breathing. A shot rang out and the doors opened, allowing a flood of agents to flow into the room, weapons drawn.

Mayfair holstered her own weapon as she ran across to where the two bodies had fallen, Patterson being dragged down by Bradford’s sudden dead weight.

“Come on; up you get. You’re okay.” Mayfair wrapped her arm around Patterson and led her to the nearest chair, worried the younger woman’s legs were going to give way. Then, as Patterson sank into the seat, Mayfair knelt in front of her and gently turned her face away from the sight of Bradford, bleeding from the shoulder, being cuffed by very enthusiastic agents. Someone came up with a jacket and draped it around Patterson as someone else appeared with a steaming cup.

“Tea, lots of sugar,” was whispered in Mayfair’s ear as Patterson took a sip before wrapping her shaking hands around the mug.

Mayfair smiled. “You’ll be okay now,” she assured Patterson. “No one’s going to get away with hurting you in our own office. Not on my watch.”

 

Two: Weller

Kurt really didn’t like taking Patterson into the field. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the training for it; every FBI agent went through the same basic training before getting the chance to even think about whether field work was for them or not. He just hated the idea of her getting hurt because of a decision he had made. The other members of his team had signed up for it, accepted the danger as part of the day to day. But Patterson worked in a computer lab where, he was pretty sure, the biggest danger facing her was carpal tunnel syndrome.

Out in the field, even when the field was actually a secured crime scene, they had to worry about criminals returning to the scene, criminals driving by and shooting the place up, exposure to previously unnoticed toxins, and, apparently, secret tunnels that get opened accidentally and topple people down a six foot drop - “Ish. I mean, it’s dark so I can’t see exactly. It felt like about six feet when I landed though.” - and can’t be opened from the inside. Because this was his life now, apparently.

“Are you sure that’s all you did? Reached up and grabbed the yellow notepad?” Reade was sounding frustrated, and Weller couldn’t blame him. For the last half hour, once Patterson had assured them she was okay, they’d been trying to figure out how to open the door she had fallen through, wanting to avoid destroying the wall if it was at all possible.

“Yes, for the last time, I. Am. Sure.” Even with the slight distortion of the phone’s speaker, it was clear Patterson was as annoyed as they were. “I was barely even touching the stupid wall.” She coughed a little, and Weller’s eyes narrowed; it wasn’t the first time she’d coughed since she’d called him to say, a little sheepishly, that she was trapped in a hidden room.

“It’s really dusty in here.” Now her voice was an oddly uneven mixture of angry and plaintive, and Weller sighed.

“Anyone know where we can get sledgehammers at this time of night?”

***

The first few blows felt utterly satisfying. This wall was standing between him and a member of his team, and now he was attacking it with great prejudice. And then Patterson’s voice rang out from his cell.

“There’s water! It’s flooding in from somewhere! Weller? What do I do?”

Kurt took a quick glance around at Zapata and Reade, who had twin expressions of horror on their faces, before squaring his shoulders. “You just hang on, Patterson. I’ll be right there with you.” And down the sledgehammer came again, less satisfying than before, more frantic.

Patterson could be heard over the cell, muttering to herself about volume and cubic capacity, rapid-fire phrases that no one was sure she even knew she was saying.

The second there was a hole in the stupid, too thick wall, water started trickling onto the carpet and Patterson shouted “I think it’s some sort of booby trap!” like she was pleased to have figured it out. Kurt shook his head, adjusted his stance, and brought the hammer down on the edge of the hole, hard enough to crack the wall right down to the skirting board.

The instant he could fit, Weller threw a rope through the hole and then followed it down. While he was braced for the fall, he was taken by surprise by the sheer depth of the water and came up choking to see Patterson struggling to suppress a grin. “Are you seriously laughing at me right now? I’m here to save you.”

“Oh, I know, and I’m not, not really, it’s just uh, it’s really good to see you.” Patterson looked exhausted, her face seemed almost grey even in the dim light of the flashlights Zapata and Reade were shining through the hole in the wall, and Weller suddenly remembered the coughing and wondered if she hadn’t cracked a rib or two.

He waded across to her and made quick work of tying the rope around her in a quick but secure harness. He tried to keep her steady as Reade and Zapata pulled her up and made a mental note to start carrying more than one length of rope in the trunk of each vehicle.

***

In hindsight, they were lucky Weller hadn’t broken the man’s jaw. The, ahem, genius had decided the hidden room was the perfect place to hide absurdly detailed records about his activities, and it didn’t take the team long to track him down once they recovered the intel he had there. They had even found the invoice from the construction work that had made his little water trap a possibility.

Unfortunately, he had decided the best way to deal with being arrested by the FBI was to laugh at the idea of an agent getting caught by his booby trap. He’d made comment after comment and finally came out with, “Do bullet proof vests hamper buoyancy? Imagine the irony, killed by life-saving clothing,” and Weller’s fist had flown out with vicious speed.

Reade and Zapata had both stepped forward, ready to grab their boss even as they exchanged a look that clearly said, ‘I didn’t see anything, did you?’ but Weller simply bent at the waist to bring his face closer to their perp’s.

“No one hurts my team. Not on my watch.”

 

Three: Zapata

Take Patterson to the scene so she could identify the computer processor RAM chips (so she couldn’t build a computer from scratch, sue her), pack up said computer stuff, get computer stuff and Patterson back to the HQ. Easy.

So why, exactly, was she currently practicing her defensive driving with an, “I’m too scared to feel scared so just shut up about being scared and I’ll be just fine!” Patterson in the passenger seat shouting directions at her? As she nearly lost control of the car, Zapata had to wonder if she’d made a habit of hunting out and kicking black cats in a previous life.

“Turn left up ahead!”

“Where?”

“Where the road goes left!”

Zapata gritted her teeth to hold back a sarcastic reply that absolutely would not help the situation and made a mental note to suggest all lab techs should undergo extensive driving courses. A staccato burst behind them had her taking the death-defying risk of pulling one hand off the wheel even as she was trying to take the left turn to shove Patterson down to the foot well.

“How long until we’re in range of that damn cell tower?” Zapata snapped, using a superhuman amount of willpower to keep her cursing of idiot wannabe domestic terrorists to herself.

Patterson’s eyes were darting from the map on her cell to the map she was holding, trying to take in all the information being offering by both at the same time. “It’s going to be, uh, maybe another three minutes?” Then her cell dropped to the floor as a bullet shattered the rear window and she instinctively threw her hands over her head. Zapata risked taking her eyes off the road long enough to take in the sight of her friend cowering on the floor of the car and felt a surge of anger. 

She tightened her grip on the steering wheel with her left hand, pulled her sidearm with the right, and told Patterson to take a deep breath and brace herself. Then she yanked on the wheel and threw the car into a spin that she only just managed to control. The men chasing them were clearly surprised by the sight of the car they’d been pursuing suddenly spinning to face them, and that split second of hesitation was all Zapata needed.

She threw her arm out, shattering the window without even realising as she took aim and fired in the same instant. A few seconds later, it was all over. 

“Stay there, Patterson,” Zapata ordered as she climbed out of the driver’s seat to check that the danger had been eliminated.

“Don’t worry; I will.”

Zapata allowed herself the briefest of grins as she walked toward the other car before straightening her face back into its grim, federal agent look. Both the occupants were dead, thanks to some remarkable marksmanship that would have Weller and Mayfair grinning proudly and prompt Reade to challenge her to a shootout at the range.

“Zapata?”

“It’s okay; you can come on out.”

A few grunts accompanied Patterson’s progress as she stretched her already cramped legs and back. “I thought I was going to die back there.”

The words brought another, more genuine smile to Zapata’s face. “Not on my watch.”

 

Four: Jane

Missions didn’t exactly follow a set timetable and setbacks were rarely polite enough to announce themselves before throwing everyone’s plans out of whack. It was part of the job, everyone knew that going into the agency, but man, did it ever make maintaining a social life difficult. Friends could only be so understanding about the constant stream of rain checks and cancellations, especially when the only explanation that could ever be given was that “something came up at work.”

Knowing how hard it could be to keep friendships alive made Patterson feel almost painfully sorry for Jane. If this job made friends who had been around since gradeschool slowly vanish, then how on earth was someone meant to make new friends when they didn’t even remember what friendship was?

Patterson started asking Jane to have lunch with her out of sympathy more than anything else, showing up with various foodstuffs from various global regions in the hopes of finding something Jane would remember liking. Then, as they discovered a mutual love of Thai food, and their conversations ranged beyond, “What about foo young; can we try that next?” Patterson discovered that she actually quite liked Jane. 

Once Mayfair agreed that security around Jane could be relaxed, Patterson started planning lunches at places that didn’t offer takeout, and it was only natural that, at times when Jane was so lonely in her safe house that she could scream and Patterson’s friends were too frustrated to risk another missed night out, the two of them would grab takeout and spend the evening watching movies.

So they had no reason to assume anything out of the ordinary was going to happen when they decided on curry to eat and a comedy to watch. Sure it was dark out, but it was the middle of winter. And yes, Jane was holding her wallet instead of carrying it in a bag, but even so, that didn’t give some random guys permission to try to mug her.

“Hand over your purse, sweetheart. You too, darling.” The man’s voice was cold and hard, and Patterson shivered at the sound even as she saw Jane take a step forward. “My friends and me? We’re having a bad day, so just give me your purses.”

“Okay, okay.” Patterson held her hands up, anxious to look as nonthreatening as possible. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a puzzled look appear on Jane’s face. “It’s fine. She doesn’t have much cash on her, and I don’t have my purse on me.” She took an involuntary step back as two more men walked out of the nearby alley and toward them. Jane moved as well, sideways, trying to stand between Patterson and the three men.

“If you don’t have money to give us, maybe we can take something else from you.” His eyes raked Patterson’s body, slowly moving up and down, licking his lips.

Patterson gasped, shaking her head, her eyes wide as she processed the implications of what she was hearing. Jane simply cocked her head to one side and shifted her weight slightly.

One of the men reached out to snag her wallet, and Jane took it as her cue to act. She grabbed the man’s wrist and pulled him forward, using her free hand to deliver a devastating blow to the pressure point in the side of his throat. The other two men blinked for a split second as their friend slumped to the ground before they both moved to try to attack Jane.

She warded off their blows for a few moments, fighting defensively in order to reach back and give Patterson a firm shove away from the fight. As soon as she was sure that Patterson was safely out of the way, Jane went on the offensive. In less than a minute, both men were on the ground, one out cold, the other groaning miserably and clutching at his, uh, manhood. Jane stood over them to ensure none of them got any clever ideas in their heads about restarting the fight while Patterson called the local PD to come pick up the muggers.

Afterward, when they had given their statements, phoned brief reports in to Mayfair, and finally eaten their fill, the two women were lounging on the sofa in relative silence, letting the sounds of their latest film wash over them.

“So, that was scary.” Patterson tried to keep her voice steady and casual, but it was painfully obvious that she was still shaken by what had happened. Jane gave her a sharp look but didn’t say anything. “I uh, I really thought something very very bad was going to happen back there.”

Jane patted Patterson’s knee, the only part of her she could reach. “Nothing was ever going to happen,” she said quietly, “not on my watch.”

 

Five: Reade

Reade liked to think of himself as reasonably streetsmart, not the sort of person to go charging head first into a stupid situation. Offering to drive Patterson into work because her car was in the shop wasn’t the sort of situation he thought it would be best to avoid. So it came as a surprise to him to find himself tied to a chair with a pale and bleeding Patterson tied to a pillar across from him. He still felt dizzy from whatever it was that he’d been injected with when whoever these people were had grabbed them. 

“Reade? Thank God you’re awake! These people are insane!”

“Patterson…”

“They think we can give them access to NSA files! NSA!” She wasn’t even trying to be quiet, and Reade was getting worried about how their captors would react to a rambling lab tech.

“Patterson you need to calm down.” He twisted his wrists as he spoke, straining against the expertly tied ropes. They both jumped as the door banged open.

“Finally! We've been waiting for you to wake up, Agent.” Reade had never heard the title 'agent’ sound like such an insult before. “And you, Madam Agent.”

Reade bristled and before Patterson could say anything he snorted. “Are we meant to be afraid of you?” The man (Reade decided to call him Thick-Neck) moved to stand over the chair.

“I certainly think it would be wise. Your friend seems to be.” And Thick-Neck looked over his shoulder at Patterson, a smirk on his face.

“She's afraid of your breath,” snarked Reade, still twisting against the knots. “She's got a delicate sense of smell.” The blow wasn't exactly unexpected, but it still made him see stars for a second or two.

“Maybe I should talk to your 'delicate’ friend,” murmured Thick-Neck, licking his lips, a gross, suggestive look on his face.

“Maybe I should ask my cousin to teach you to land a hit,” Reade retorted, desperate to keep the guy away from Patterson. “She's five.” This time Thick-Neck’s fist landed in Reade's stomach, and he retched as he choked on his own breath.

Thick-Neck sauntered over to Patterson and ran his hand slowly down her cheek. “Can you help me to shut this guy up?” he purred, smirking as Patterson tried, unsuccessfully, to hide a shudder.

“Do you ever shut up?” Reade questioned, knowing that riling the guy up was not an ideal plan but unable to think of any other way to keep Thick-Neck’s attention on him and away from Patterson.

'Just hold out until the team find you,’ he told himself as Thick-Neck walked back over, cracking his knuckles. 'They’re bound to have missed you both by now.’

“Oh, Agent Man,” sighed Thick-Neck as he shook his head. “You're gonna regret this attitude.”

The very first punch caught him square on the nose, and he heard Patterson gasp as blood immediately started flowing down his face. He ignored the pain in favour of mentally pleading with her to stay quiet. He forced himself to grin. “Is that really the best you can do?”

Thick-Neck swung again, caught him on the temple, and the world spun as the chair he was in tilted and tipped. Rather than picking him up, Thick-Neck simply started using his feet and kicked Reade twice in the stomach.

His vision was going alarmingly grey as Thick-Neck knelt next to him, speaking loudly and slowly. “Once I've killed you, I'm going to make your colleague give me those files. Then I'm going to kill her. Slowly. So very slowly.”

“Sure,” Reade choked out, spitting out blood. “You're gonna bore her to death.” Thick-Neck's boot came down on Reade's shoulder, and he heard something crack and couldn't hold back the scream that was wrenched from somewhere deep inside him.

Patterson gave a small scream that was nearly drowned by the crash of the door being kicked open. Weller ran in, flanked by Jane and Zapata. Thick-Neck didn't stand a chance, all three agents firing so quickly that they would never know which bullet killed him.

It was all very heroic and cool. It was a shame Reade was unconscious.

***

He woke slowly, feeling somehow heavy. It took a second to realise he’d been given some pretty decent painkillers. An experimental stretch told him why as small fires erupted in various places on his body. The flames in his shoulder and neck made him feel sick, even through the meds, and he carefully relaxed again.

“Reade?” Such a quiet whisper that he thought he'd imagined it. “Are you awake?”

“Patterson?” He tried to turn his head but a hand on his cheek stopped him.

“I'm not meant to be here; I kind of snuck in.”

“Snuck in? You?” He heard her laugh and managed to force his eyes to open again to see she was bending over him.

“Jane might have helped a little by causing a distraction.” Another laugh, and Reade couldn't smother his smile, making a slightly fuzzy mental note to ask for details as soon as he was up to actual laughter.

“I uh… I just wanted to say thank you. For keeping that guy away from me. I thought… I mean, I really thought he was going to hurt me.”

Reade managed to move the arm that was throbbing and put his hand over hers. “That wouldn't have happened,” he said, as firmly as he could. “Not on my watch.”

 

+1- Patterson

Dead air ringing in her ears, Patterson’s fingers flew over the keyboard in front of her. The mission was meant to be simple, all the intel at their fingertips. Instead, Reade and Zapata had gotten lost on the way to the barn, and, while waiting for them to arrive, Weller and Jane had been ambushed by the human traffickers they were meant to be arresting. Now all four comm lines were down, and the GPS on Reade and Zapata’s car had them nearly 60 miles away from their last known location.

Some small, uncharitable part of her brain reminded Patterson that Jane had screwed with the GPS trackers before, but Patterson ruthlessly quashed the nasty little muttering. Despite all that had happened, she trusted Jane, and even if she didn’t, the cries of alarm and pain that had echoed through the comm link meant something was seriously wrong. Backup details, dispatched by Patterson no more than ten seconds after the first gunshot had rung out, were too far out to be of any immediate use. Weller and Jane would be counting on Reade and Zapata, and they in turn were counting on Patterson to get them to the wretched barn.

Years of experience and practice let her ignore the tension and focus on nothing but the screen as she worked frantically to bypass whatever was jamming the team’s comm lines. She needed to find out where Reade and Zapata really were and get them to that barn to help Weller and Jane before anything… A supreme effort of will dragged her thinking back on track and, at her quiet “Yes!”, two voices erupted in her ear.

Ten minutes later, she had successfully guided Reade and Zapata to the barn (how and why their GPS had eaten its own head was a matter for any time when half the field agents weren’t being held captive) and had pulled up satellite images of the area.

“Reade, keep going north, about 40 feet. There’s a door there that, according to the blueprints, leads into a small back room. From there you should be able to see the entire the rest of the floor. Zapata, head east. I’ll guide you to the back door of the farmhouse. There’s a connecting door between the two buildings.”

It was like the world’s most intense video game. Patterson had to keep one eye on two separate screens and the other on the blueprints and architectural plans of the farm while simultaneously guiding both Reade and Zapata around the patrol routes established by the intel handed to them by Reade’s CI. She was almost glad when, after a quick “Three, two, one,” the shooting started and relegated her to observer status.

It didn’t take long for the two highly trained agents to take control of the situation, and then it was back to Patterson to call in an ambulance (Weller’s right wrist looked to be broken and Jane had all the signs of a concussion) and to start running facial recognition on the photos sent to her by Reade. Occupied as she was, it took Patterson a second to realise Mayfair was standing beside her.

“Nice work today. That could have gone very differently.” Mayfair smiled.

Patterson returned it, confidently stating, “No, it couldn’t have. Not on my watch.”

**Author's Note:**

> This took so much longer to write than it should have. I blame various people. None of whom are actually at fault.


End file.
